Comments on: If We Could Only Just Start Over… http://churchofman.org/08-30-2007/if-we-could-only-just-start-over/ Dedicated to the idea of a univeral church of humanity, with no belief in deities required. Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:46:40 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: The Apostle http://churchofman.org/08-30-2007/if-we-could-only-just-start-over/comment-page-1/#comment-93 The Apostle Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:46:40 +0000 http://churchofman.org/08-30-2007/if-we-could-only-just-start-over/#comment-93 Oh, don't get me wrong, I loved the story and as a Privateer fan, EVE is the first MMO that got me tempted to play it... still tempted, actually. I was saving this for a future article, but humanity thrives on conflict. In particular, competition. If the game's focus was to all get along, no one would play... until someone tried to undermine the game, or challenged the majority on an issue, and conflict broke out. I don't think the creators of EVE were so naive, in fact I think the seized on this idea of reproducing real-world conflict and have done it remarkably well. Thanks for the update on the sociologists studying the game (I've heard of similar projects going on in WoW.) These social games do provide a fishbowl scenario to observe communities lacking in (or with alternate) parameters for a social contract, allowing the community to re-create one as they see fit. On a side note, perhaps the Church of Man should establish a presence at EVE... now, should we take the form of our namesake from Privateer and wage war on technology with technology? LOL... Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved the story and as a Privateer fan, EVE is the first MMO that got me tempted to play it… still tempted, actually.

I was saving this for a future article, but humanity thrives on conflict. In particular, competition. If the game’s focus was to all get along, no one would play… until someone tried to undermine the game, or challenged the majority on an issue, and conflict broke out. I don’t think the creators of EVE were so naive, in fact I think the seized on this idea of reproducing real-world conflict and have done it remarkably well.

Thanks for the update on the sociologists studying the game (I’ve heard of similar projects going on in WoW.) These social games do provide a fishbowl scenario to observe communities lacking in (or with alternate) parameters for a social contract, allowing the community to re-create one as they see fit.

On a side note, perhaps the Church of Man should establish a presence at EVE… now, should we take the form of our namesake from Privateer and wage war on technology with technology? LOL…

]]> By: Mandrill http://churchofman.org/08-30-2007/if-we-could-only-just-start-over/comment-page-1/#comment-89 Mandrill Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:15:16 +0000 http://churchofman.org/08-30-2007/if-we-could-only-just-start-over/#comment-89 Thanks for the trackback, glad you found the article interesting. You kind of miss the point of the game though, EVE is built around the need to compete for resources such as space and minerals, if there was no competition there would be no game. EVE was not designed as somewhere we could start over and do a better job, it was designed to reflect the world we currently live in. Sociologists and economists are already studying EVE and other virtual societies to gain insights into how people interact and what can be done to change the way we do things in the real world. Something I didn't mention in the article was the fact that CCP have actually looked into provideing the organisational governmental tools available within EVE as stand alone products, to improve the efficiency of real world oraganisations. To think that real world societies could benefit from software developed for a game... I reccomend you watch the trailer for the current version of the game, it may give you a better idea of where it's headed. Which by the way the players have a large influence on, if we'd played the game differently who knows where we would have ended up? But you could say that for real life couldn't you. Thanks for the trackback, glad you found the article interesting.

You kind of miss the point of the game though, EVE is built around the need to compete for resources such as space and minerals, if there was no competition there would be no game. EVE was not designed as somewhere we could start over and do a better job, it was designed to reflect the world we currently live in. Sociologists and economists are already studying EVE and other virtual societies to gain insights into how people interact and what can be done to change the way we do things in the real world.

Something I didn’t mention in the article was the fact that CCP have actually looked into provideing the organisational governmental tools available within EVE as stand alone products, to improve the efficiency of real world oraganisations. To think that real world societies could benefit from software developed for a game…

I reccomend you watch the trailer for the current version of the game, it may give you a better idea of where it’s headed. Which by the way the players have a large influence on, if we’d played the game differently who knows where we would have ended up? But you could say that for real life couldn’t you.

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